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Mornings hit different out here.

Not like in the city, where dawn chokes through diesel fumes and half-baked ambition. Out here, it’s clean. Raw. Honest.

Birdsong cuts sharp through the trees like a thousand conversations happening all at once, most of them loud and useless—just like the board meetings. The mist burns off slow across the lake, curling off the water like a shy lover, reluctant to leave.

This is my time.

Before the chaos. Before the fires I didn’t start need putting out by hands that are already too full.

I take my first lap around camp with coffee in one hand and a checklist in the other. Black. No sugar. Same mug every day. It says “Don’t Make Me Use My Orc Voice.” Julie added it to the break room shelf two weeks ago, and nobody’s had the guts to use it but me.

Smart.

Groth passes me on the trail, nodding. “Boss.”

“Groth.”

“Scare off the troll scouts?” he asks. I chuckle.

“They learned to knock.”

He snorts.

“I’ll have your punch list by lunch.”

“Make it ten. We’re tightening rotations.”

“Something wrong?”

“Not yet.”

He frowns, then jogs off toward the new staging platform. The goblin crew is already arguing about whose turn it is to enchant the rivets.

I keep walking, boots crunching over pine needles, gravel, and the occasional broken crayon. Kids drop things. Staff forgets. Nature reclaims.

It’s a cycle.

And every day, I try to keep it balanced.

Lillian’s voice floats through the treetops as I round the corner near the dining tent—bright, chattering, entirely too early for anyone not hopped up on sugar cereal.

She’s with Julie.

Of course.

They’re knee-deep in glitter and some kind of monstrous arts-and-crafts explosion. A half-finished structure that looks like a shrine to chaos and shiny trash. Lillian’s got a crown of moss and beads on her head. Julie’s got paint on her neck. Neither of them looks remotely sorry. And somehow... it works.

They work.

I start to turn toward the rigging zone, but my steps slow. Something in my gut twists. A warning I don’t have words for yet.

Something’s off today.

Too still.

Too bright.

Like the forest is holding its breath.